Galyna's March Update and trip to Ireland

It has been a while, and I am truly sorry for not providing updates sooner and more regularly.

To be completely honest, I have postponed my “To-do” to write an update for weeks upon weeks now, and every time I did that it created even more guilt and dread about not providing any updates.

We must get back on track with the updates and having a blog in general, so this is the first step.

Let’s start with G!

Galyna is doing very, very well. On January 27th she turned 2 years old (another update that I should’ve posted but did not :( )! She’s is hovering around 36-37lbs and is wearing clothing that is 4t to 5t in size. She’s a big, fearless girl that is full of energy.

She has now had 22 total chemotherapy sessions. The last session was this past Monday and she did wonderful! It has become a routine even for her, as she lets nurses check all of her vitals with minimum effort, and she is very used to having her port accessed. It is pretty incredible to go from having multiple people hold her tight to get accessed to where we are now.
Side effects continue being minimal, with most damage coming from prednisone. It usually results in massive tantrums as well as insomnia. The changes in Galynas behavior are so evident between treatments.

During the chemo session on Feb 25th the doctors informed us that they are really confident in the progress Galyna is making. Her last PET scan was right around Christmas, and we were expecting to have another PET scan at this point. However, the oncology team is so confident in her progress that they didn’t want to expose her to more tests than needed and were going to wait until June to have a scan.
For some reason their confidence increased even more, as during the last chemo on 3/18 we were informed that they won’t have another scan until July! And if they are happy with the results the scan shows, Galyna will be done with her treatment some time in August! So if everything goes according to plan, Galyna should only have 4 or 5 more sessions and be finished. We can’t wait for that day!

August can’t come soon enough, but the last 9 months flew by, so the end to this process will come in no time as well!

Sister Lucy; Galway, Ireland

Many of you know that I became a United States citizen in 2018. I applied for my US passport as fast as I could, and I’m glad I did. My sister Olga and I ended up traveling to Galway, Ireland in December of 2018 to see our sister Lucy. Unfortunately, she got diagnosed with grade 3 astrocytoma (brain tumor) and we just had to go. At that time we didn’t know what will happen and we just needed to spend time with our sister. We both haven’t seen her for about 5 years at that point.

As of right now, Lucy is going through a very aggressive radiation and chemotherapy. The treatment brought everything to a status quo, and it’s hard to know what to expect next. Things are not getting worse, but they are also not getting better.
As Galyna’s treatment has gone as well as it could, please lift up my sister and her family for the same.

Again, thank you to everyone that takes time to read these and check up on us. It is great to know that even during darkest times and hardest trials we are not alone.